Celia sighed as she looked about and took it all in once more. It was a dreary place. She had been in it but a week. Would she ever get used to it? She did not curl her lip in scorn as many other girls would have done over that room and its furnishings. Neither did she feel that utter distaste that is akin to hatred. Instead was a kind of pity in her heart for it all, and for the poor lonely creatures who had no other place to call home. Where there is such pity, there is sometimes love not far away. She even rose, went to the doorway and looped the loose, discouraged folds of the chenille curtain in more graceful fashion. Somehow her fingers could not help doing so much toward making that room different.
Then she sighed and went to the window again. She could see the belated postman now across the street. She watched him as he flitted back and forth, ringing this bell and that, and searching in the great leather bag for papers or packages. His breath showed white against the dark greyish-blue of the misty evening air. His grey uniform seemed to be a part of the mist. The yellow glare of the street-lamp touched the gilt buttons and made a bright spot of the letters on his cap as he paused a moment to study an address before coming to their door.
Celia opened the door before he had time to ring and took the letters from his hand. There were not many. The boarders in that house had not many correspondents. She stepped into the parlor once more, and turned up the gas now for a moment to see if there were any for herself. Strange to say, there were two, rather thin and unpromising it is true, but they gave a little touch of the unusual to the dull day. She noticed that one bore a familiar postmark and was in her aunt’s handwriting. The other held the city mark and seemed to be from some firm of lawyers. She did not feel much curiosity concerning it. It was probably some circular. It did not look in the least interesting. She pushed them both quickly into her pocket as the front door opened letting in several noisy boarders. She did not wish to read her letters in public. They would keep till after supper. The bell was already ringing. It would not be worthwhile to go upstairs before she went to the dining-room. Experience taught her that the supper was at its very worst the minute after the bell rang. If one waited one must take the consequences, and “the consequences” were not desirable. The meals in that house were not too tempting at any time. Not that she cared much for her supper, she was too weary, but one must eat to live, and so she went to the dining-room.
Out there the gas was turned to its highest. The coarse tablecloth was none of the cleanest. In fact, it reminded one of former breakfasts and dinners. The thick white dishes bore marks of hard usage. They were nicked and cracked. There were plates of heavy, sour-looking bread at either end of the table. The butter looked mussy and uninviting. The inevitable, scanty supply of prunes stood before the plate of the young German clerk, who was already in his chair helping himself to a liberal dish. The clerk was fond of prunes, and always got to the table before anyone else. Some of the others good-naturedly called him selfish, and frequently passed meaningful remarks veiled in thin jokes concerning this habit of his; but if he understood he kept the matter to himself, and was apparently not thin-skinned.
There was a stew for dinner that night. Celia dreaded stews since the night of her arrival when she had found a long curly hair on her plate in the gravy. There were such possibilities of utility in a stew. It was brought on in little thick white dishes, doled out in exact portions. There were great green fat pickles, suggesting copper in their pickling and there was a plate of cheese and another of crackers. A girl brought each one a small spoonful of canned corn, but it was cold and scarcely cooked at all, and the kernels were large and whole. Celia having tasted it, pushed her dish back and did not touch it again. On the side table was a row of plates each containing a slim, thin piece of pale-crusted pie, its interior being dark and of an undefined character. Celia tried to eat. The dishes were not all clean. Her spoon had a sticky handle and so had her fork. The silver was all worn off the blade of her knife, and she could not help thinking that perhaps it was done by being constantly used to convey food to the mouth of the brakeman with the tenor voice.
One by one the boarders drifted in. It was surprising how quickly they gathered after that bell rang. They knew what they had to depend upon in the way of bread and butter, and it was first come first served. Little Miss Burns sat across the table from Celia. She was thin and nervous and laughed a good deal in an excited way, as if everything were unusually funny, and she were in a constant state of embarrassing apology. There were tired little lines around her eyes, and her mouth still wore a baby droop, though she was well along in years. Celia noticed that she drank only a cup of tea and nibbled a cracker. She did not look well. It was plain the dinner was no more appetizing to her than to the young girl who had so recently come there to board. She ought to have some delicate thin slices of nicely browned toast and a cup of tea with real cream in it, and a fresh egg poached just right, or a tiny cup of good strong beef bouillon, Celia said to herself. She amused herself by thinking how she would like to slip out in the kitchen and get them for her, only—and she almost smiled at the thought—she would hardly find the necessary articles with which to make all that out in the Morris kitchen.
Next to Miss Burns sat two young girls, clerks in a three-cent store. They carried a good deal of would-be style, and wore many bright rings on their grimy fingers, whose nails were never cleaned nor cut apparently—except by their teeth. These girls were rather pretty in a coarse way, and laughed and talked a good deal in loud tones with the tenor brakeman, whose name was Bob Yates, and with the other young men boarders. These young men were respectively a clerk in a department store, a student in the University, and a young teacher in the public schools. Celia noticed that neither the student nor the school-teacher ate heartily, and that the young dry goods salesman had a hollow cough. How nice it would be if they all could have a good dinner just for once, soup and roast beef, and good bread and vegetables, with a delicious old-fashioned apple dumpling smoking hot, such as her aunt Hannah could make. How she would enjoy giving it to them all. How she would like to eat some of it herself! She sighed as she pushed back her plate with a good half of the stew yet untouched, and felt that it was impossible to eat another mouthful of that. The she felt ashamed to think she cared so much for mere eating, and tried to talk pleasantly to the little old lady beside her, who occupied a small dismal room on the third floor and seemed to stay in it most of the time. Celia had not yet found out her occupation nor her standing in society, but she noticed that she trembled when she tried to cut her meat, and she was shabbily clothed in rusty black that looked as if it had served its time out several times over.
Mrs. Morris came into the dining-room when the pie was being served. She was large and worried-looking, and wore a soiled calico wrapper without a collar. Her hair had not been combed since morning and some locks had escaped in her neck and on her forehead and added to her generally dejected appearance. She sat down heavily and wearily at the head of the table, and added her spiritless voice to the conversation. She asked them all how they enjoyed the parade and declared it would have been enough parade for her if she could have “set down for a couple of hours.” Then she sighed and drank a cup of tea from her saucer, holding the saucer on the palm of her hand.
It all looked hopelessly dreary to Celia. And here she expected to spend the home part of her life for several years at least, or if not here, yet in some place equally destitute of anything which constitutes a home.
Except for her brief conversation with the old lady on her right, and a few words to Miss Burns, she had spoken to no one during the meal, and as soon as she had excused herself from the pie and folded her napkin, she slipped upstairs to her room, for the thought of the two letters in her pocket seemed more inviting than the pie. She turned the gas to its highest though it did screech, that she might see to read her letters, and then she drew them forth. Her aunt Hannah’s came